


Lettered Men

by twelve_pastels



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Author Does Insufficient Research, Author Draws From Real Life, Author Gaily Ignores Deadlines, Author Has A Mental Affliction, Author loves a man in uniform, Epistlatory, Hawaii, M/M, Pineapples, Post-War, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 06:12:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4127868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelve_pastels/pseuds/twelve_pastels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Reservations: Made.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Ship: appalling, but better than what we crossed the Atlantic on.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Buy (on arrival): pineapples, VAT 69, pineapples, charcoal, sunscreen, pineapples, Aloha shirt (orange for me, green for Dick, he’ll be horrified), pineapples.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lettered Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mols](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mols/gifts).



> Written for Fic For Victory 2015: the prompt was Winnix, postwar, Hawai’i, and not knowing what to do with yourself after the war. My recipient, mols, is a patient and merciful goddess for waiting while I dug myself out of a hole and managed to finish this. Mea culpa, darling. I hope you like this. 
> 
> As with my previous FFV fic, this will be locked in roughly a month.

***  
_Lettered: adjective_  
_1\. educated or learned._  
_2\. of, relating to, or characterized by learning or literary culture._  
_3\. marked with or as if with letters._

***  
_On notepaper, in pencil_

To DO!  
\- Reservations: Made.  
\- Ship: appalling, but better than what we crossed the Atlantic on.  
\- Buy (on arrival in Honolulu): pineapples, VAT 69, pineapples, charcoal, sunscreen, pineapples, Aloha shirt (orange for me, green for Dick, he’ll be horrified), pineapples  
\- Other: discreetly visit doctor in Los A., ask if writing notes to self is sign of madness (for a friend).

***  
_On railway stationary, handwriting slightly shaky due to motion of rail car._

Dear Dick,

Seeing as you’re being an ungrateful bastard and have gone to bed at the godless hour of 10pm in a first class train car, I’m left with no other option than to harangue you via pen and paper. Knowing me, of course, it will be too thick to jam under your door, and I’ll have to sit in a disapproving silence all through breakfast as you read it and get jam all over the stationary. Seriously, you and jam. I’m supposed to be the messy one here. 

Of course, there’s also the possibility that you’re still awake and trying to go over your father’s accounts for the third time. If you are, I’ll phone your mother from Los Angeles. I’m more than happy to pay for a transcontinental call to hear her scold you.

Really, Dick, you’re making work for yourself where there doesn’t need to be any. I know you’re worried about having something to do with yourself now that you’re home, I know you’re used to activity and all of a sudden you feel like there’s nothing to do, but seriously. This is a vacation. You deserve it, I deserve it, and my old man has promised not to send any telegrams for the first two weeks so that you have some time to think about the job he offered you. That being said, once the time is up, expect him to inundate us with messages, wherever we are. You made a hell of an impression at dinner.

We’ll be in Los Angeles tomorrow, and Buck has promised to meet us. That’ll make you feel better, to see that he’s alright, and I’ll feel better knowing that one of our party is sober enough to make sure we can find the hotel again.

Nix.

***  
_On hotel stationary, midafternoon, crammed under the door._

Dick, 

You’d better have gotten your nap in by now, or we’ll miss dinner. Buck somehow conned Malarkey into coming down, and something’s bound to happen that involves a few starlets, and a champagne fountain, and a prime rib the size of your head. Also, I stepped on one of your cufflinks, so at least we know where it is.

Meet me in the lobby. Do it after I’ve had one Manhattan, but before I can have two. 

Nix.

***  
_On a cocktail napkin_

Things that should happen tonight:  
\- Champagne, steak, caviar, chocolate, cheese plate, shrimp cocktail, fruit (NO APPLES, all we could find in Germany was apples)  
\- Get at least one girl to sit on Dick’s lap, it’s hilarious when he blushes  
\- Get Malarkey to sit on a girl’s lap, he never blushes  
\- Make sure Malarkey and Buck are back home, not just living here, I don’t know where their heads are and that worries me  


Things that should not happen tonight:  
\- Don’t let Malarkey sit in Buck’s lap, this isn’t San Francisco  
\- Don’t let them make Dick try to drink  
\- Don’t let Dick not finish dinner. He needs to eat more

***  
_On hotel stationary, posted one hour before sailing._

Buck –

You’re an asshole. I have a hangover that would kill a bear. We all missed you like a limb. Call sometime, you rat bastard. Newark owes you several.

Lewis.

***  
_On liner stationary, a day and a half out of the port of Los Angeles._

Dick,

I’m sorry you’re seasick, I didn’t know the currents were this bad. Please, please, eat the crackers and the green apple. I know how you feel about apples. I know how we all feel about apples. I know how hungry all of us were and I remember the look on Luz’s face when those girls in Bavaria gave us a bushel of them even though it was all they had to eat, too. But it’ll settle your stomach, so EAT THE GODDAMN GREEN APPLE.

I think about those girls a lot. The Nazis had taken their brothers; then they’d come back for their father; and then the letters stopped coming. They weren’t a political family, the farm had come down from their mother’s side, and they knew as much about what was going on in Berlin as the average Pennsylvania farmer knew what was going on in Washington. Hell, your Dad likely had better access to information than they did; newspapers, distribution, and the like. And when none of their men came back, they decided they were going to keep their damn farm; it had been their mother’s, after all, and now there were the three of them to look after it.

(Besides, did you see those axes hanging next to the door, when they had the officers inside to speak to them? I don’t know how you could have missed them, Speirs was drooling over the double heads and carved shafts. God knows how old they were. And if all three girls were coming at you with those, you might get one of them, but the other two would get you. No wonder they still had all the livestock.)

But there they were, these three young things, and they didn’t have much of anything but were willing and unafraid to share what they had. I don’t know how Malarkey managed to con Joe into getting ahold of that much in the way of cooking material, but he was dead set and determined to teach those girls how to make apple fritters. The fact that the sugar came in ten-pound bags, and the flour twice as big, must have meant a world of difference to them.

I think about those girls a lot. I’d like to think we left their country better than they found it, but what with the Commies taking half of it, I’m not so sure.

Eat the apple.

\- Nix

***  
_Scribbled precariously on notepad, in pencil_

Possible things to do:  
\- Take Dick to beach, see if he tans or merely becomes one large freckle  
\- Iolani (sp?) Palace, I think they give tours, might be sad  
\- Have to visit Pearl, don’t want to, have to, solidarity etc  
\- Bar crawl, find pretty wahine to sit in Dick’s lap, watch him blush  
\- (Don’t wish you were the one sitting in Dick’s lap)  
\- Maybe stop writing lists while drunk  
\- Maybe don’t drink so much  
\- But really, the beach  
***  
_On resort stationary, in pen, in a significantly less shaky hand_

Dick,

I’m glad you like the bungalows. I thought that’d be better than one of the new hotels that seem to be cropping up along Waikiki; this place is going to be really popular in a hell of a hurry, mark my words, and it’ll only get crazier once they get statehood. Which they will. I mean, at this point, they can’t not.

I swear, I’ll never get over the way you are around women. You’re perfectly smooth and gentlemanly, but that fair skin of yours shows every thought you’re having, and the more they smile, the harder you blush. And I’m a little worried that you’re not tanning – yes, there are more freckles, but everything else is still bone white. I’d settle for cream at this point.

I don’t even know what I’m writing anymore. I dragged us both out here to get away from the cold, to get away from memories we don’t want to have anymore and pretend that we’re young and foolish. We may still be fools, or at least I am, but neither of us have been young for a very long time. Why did I think it would be that easy to walk away? Like the cold somehow wouldn’t follow us?

I’m always cold, even at the beach. ~~You looked so warm in Austria that I wanted to see if you’d warm me too.~~ Never mind that last bit.

In fact, never mind most of this letter. I just don’t want to see what I see when I sleep.

Tomorrow we’ll go visit Pearl. I knew a couple of boys from my prep school who were stationed out there in ’41, and I promised I’d come and visit sometime. A couple of them are even still alive, and as for the other ones – well. You understand. A promise is a promise.

Nix.  
***  
_On notepad, in pencil, in a panicked scrawl_

Oh Christ  
that’s the hull and she’d leaking oil  
you look at it and you know everyone’s still in there, inside and underneath forever  
bad idea bad idea bad idea BAD IDEA

***  
_On a torn piece of butcher’s paper_

Dick –  
I’m so sorry. I had no idea they hadn’t cleaned it up yet. I don’t know why I didn’t think. Hell, they haven’t cleaned up London yet, why would they have gotten Pearl Harbor?

It’s like I expected to come home and see everything the way it always was, all across the country, because the war never really made it here, did it? There’s nobody to censor any of this, so yes, I know the Germans shot our ships in harbor with the goddamn U-Boats, and I know they went after trading vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. But New York never had to have a blackout for bombing, and Chicago’s buildings don’t have mortar scars on them, and even Los Angeles is still the glittering little port city that it was the first time I saw it.

I forgot that the enemy hit us. It didn’t seem real, with all that we were doing, to have this sort of thing going on on the other side of the world from us, too; there was so much fighting, so much damage, so much death in Europe that how could it have touched anywhere else? How could anybody have wanted to do that, when they could see what was happening elsewhere? It’s insane, it’s all insane, and none of us are dealing with it as well as we pretend to, least of all me. And yet there’s that oil slick in the middle of the water, and the Arizona sitting under the surface. And they’re going to leave her there.

The worst part is that it was not an unintelligent colossus directing the whole thing. The people at the top, the ones whose idea this whole mess was; they were educated. They should have known better, these lettered men, and yet all they did was use their own learning to justify the madness. 

I don’t even know where I was going with this. I’m out of words and out of whiskey. I’m going to go eat a pineapple and take a nap.

Nix.

*** 

_On the back of the same butcher paper, in a finer hand._

Nix – Lew. Lewis.

None of it’s your fault. 

I know you think you’re just talking about Pearl Harbor – which is in part my fault, I should have thought of it – but you’ve always had a tendency to take responsibility for things that you needn’t. It’s part of what made you an excellent S-1.

It’s part of what makes you a good man, and someone for whom I care deeply. 

But you have to stop.

Seeing the remains of the Arizona in Pearl Harbor was not your fault. The war in Europe was not your fault. The men who didn’t come back at all, and the ones who came back in pieces, and my completely failing to cope with no longer being a moving force in the universe are not your fault.

I don’t know if what I’m saying will help at all, but I have to try.

Dick.

*** 

_Scribbled on a smaller piece of butcher paper, left on the counter._

It does help and what exactly do you mean by someone you care about

I mean at the risk of making an utter fool of myself

_On the reverse side._

It means I’m willing to take any risk that you’re willing to, as well. I trust you.

_Scrawled hastily on a paper bag._

If you’re willing and I’m willing and we both do and don’t care then WHY ARE WE STILL WRITING NOTES 

***  
_Paper bag, folded inside out, hanging from the bungalow doorknob._

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DISTURB

_Underneath, in a different hand._

Thank you. Please leave any groceries on the porch.

***  
_On notepaper, in pencil, jotted down in the early morning._

To DO!  
\- Get buttons sewn back on Dick’s shirt, he can do it but I won’t make him  
\- Get buttons sewn back on own trousers, mock Dick for lack of self restraint  
\- To buy: Pineapple, sunscreen, soda water, pineapple, steaks, fishing rods, Vaseline, pineapple  
\- Hide all telegrams from Dad; Dick’s not going back without a tan

_Underneath, later, in a different hand._

\- Prevent Nix from buying any more Aloha shirts, he’ll never wear them in New Jersey  
\- Find telegrams from Mr. Nixon, write polite reply stating that Hawaii is healthy for his son, include mentions of soda water and copious pineapple  
\- Make sure Nix remembers to put on sunscreen, he thinks he can tan well but he can’t  
\- Stop writing notes to me, Lew. There’s nothing between us that can’t be said anymore.  
\- Postcards to family, boys. Let everyone know we are very much alive. 

 

FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> The superstructure of the USS Arizona was removed during the war, but the hull was left in place as a grave for all the men who had been trapped inside. You can still see it clearly now, if you visit, but it’s got colonies of coral and anemones and small busy tropical fish all over it, which I think is a good memorial in and of itself.
> 
> The story about the farm girls in Bavaria is loosely based on something that happened to my great uncle in the Rhineland. Somewhere in Germany’s farm country, there is to this day a family that makes American-style strawberry shortcake. Not everything left behind after a war is ruination.


End file.
